Rory Smith is a football reporter for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph in the north west, covering Liverpool and Everton, as well as Manchester United, Manchester City and the myriad other teams who make up English football's heartland.

England v Wales: Why football's English Tax is no laughing matter

His voice dripped with disdain. It was the sneering disapproval of a man who has stood side-by-side with some of the great central defenders of the modern era. A man who has seen Gerry Taggart in the shower, who has heard Darren Purse swear, who was once called a flaming galah by Lucas Neill.

"I don't rate [Per] Mertesacker," said Robbie Savage, the Sony Award-winning disc jockey and midfield irritant, when asked on Radio 5 Live whether he thought Arsenal's new defensive colossus would be a success at the Emirates. "He didn't do very well at Real Madrid."

The former Leicester and Blackburn midfielder is right, of course. Mertesacker did fail to impress at the Santiago Bernabeu, mainly by virtue of never having played for Real and emphatically not being Christoph Metzelder, who did.

It is easy, and cheap, to laugh at Savage. There are times when it is impossible to avoid the nagging suspicion that he wants nothing more, that his buffoonery is his ticket to enormous wealth. He knows he's a fool, but he's a box office fool. We laugh, and he guffaws, all the way to the bank, or the pink Bentley showroom, or wherever he spends his money.

But in his ignorance lies a kernel of wisdom; in his clowning a window into reality. It is contorted, and fleeting, and is masked by presumptuous arrogance and a startling lack of research that makes Alan Shearer – "nobody's really heard of Hatem Ben Arfa" – look like Jacques Derrida. But it is still wisdom.

It is the wisdom of the mob. Ignore the fact that Savage mixed up his German international centre backs. Whether he thinks Metzelder is Mertesacker or vice versa – or, indeed, whether it was just a slip of the brain – he is dismissing two defenders of immense experience, almost peerless pedigree. Mertesacker has 75 caps for Germany, and is just 26. Metzelder, at 30 a little older, has 47, including a World Cup final.

What is he dismissing them for? The notion that what Arsenal needed was an English centre back to steer them through the difficulty of their first post-Fabregas season. A warrior, already prepared for the pitched battle of the Premier League. A foot soldier, born equipped to deal with England's boggy trenches. He is dismissing them for Gary Cahill, rated at £17 million by his contract – though Bolton would have accepted less – or Phil Jagielka, who would have cost £15 million or so to extricate from Everton. Two players who have 13 international caps between them, neither especially young, who have won precisely no honours at all.

This is the English tax, and this is the English burden: the belief that only English players know how to cope in the Premier League, that "Englishness," like "technique," "pace" and "tactical acumen" is something all successful teams must have. It is the mantra that courage and heart and spirit are the equal of ability. It is wet-Wednesday-in-Stoke syndrome. And it is a curse that is costing the English game dear. It drives up local prices in an international market, preventing cost-effective managers buying domestic goods. Why should Wenger pay £12 million for Cahill when he can get more bang for his buck in Bremen?

There is a trickle-down effect: the Super Six do not buy English because it costs so much, meaning the Cahills and Jagielkas do not get their chance to move on and up. In turn, other Premier League clubs see that Cahill is worth £17 million and inflate the price of their players, meaning Championship players cost more and so on and so forth. No wonder the Premier League is full of cheap imports: it is the simple law of supply and demand, and the English price themselves out of the market. And there is a bubble effect, too: England will take to the field against Wales tonight with a squad of players whose price-tags are so high that they should be considered among the best in the world.

Andy Carroll cost more than David Villa, Gareth Barry more than Mesut Ozil. We see the sums domestic players are touted around for and we assume they are worth that money. It is the illusion of luxury. They are not worth their valuations. And when it is proven they are not – every two years, on foreign soil – we are disappointed.

It is then that the bubble bursts. It is then, in that moment of piquant tragedy, that the tax is collected.